Neighbors raise a stink about new Mower County hog feedlot

November 09, 2007

ST. PAUL (AP) - Tim Carroll wasn't all that concerned at first when he learned a neighbor was planning to start a new hog feedlot. Now, however, he and other neighbors are raising a stink about it. Lowell Franzen gave notice in October 2006 that he wanted to build the feedlot. A county ordinance required him to hold a public meeting to disclose project details. He did - at his house. Residents were told that if they had any concerns, they could call the county feedlot officer. That officer happened to be Franzen. ''What he told me was he was going to start an operation for his son, his son was just getting into farming. And it was going to be a finishing operation,'' Carroll said. Finishing feedlots fatten pigs for slaughter. Carroll said he and his neighbors weren't worried because the smell from that type of farm isn't too bad, and everybody knew the people involved. So nobody kept up with the state or county permitting process. But the feedlot turned out to be a sow facility, for breeding piglets. It began operating late last month. A sow feedlot smells much worse than a finishing lot, Carroll said. Neighbors also learned that less than two weeks after Franzen obtained his feedlot permit from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, he sold his undeveloped property and his various permits to the Santos Group, a subsidiary of Holden Farms, one of the largest hog producers in the country. Santos bought the property for just shy of $300,000 - more than six times the assessed value of the property. Carroll alleges that Franzen lied to the public about the type of facility he intended to build and who would be involved. He told Minnesota Public Radio he considers that bribery. ''My contention is that the Santos Group paid him to use his power and authority to slip these permits through, paid him an exorbitant amount of money and basically paid him for his position,'' he said. Agricultural appraisers and real estate agents who work in the Upper Midwest told Minnesota Public Radio that undeveloped but permitted feedlots are rarely sold. It's so rare that appraisers couldn't recall another instance in the past 20 years. So, no one could say for sure whether the permits added almost a quarter of a million dollars to the land's value. But Carroll said avoiding attention and public scrutiny might have been valuable to the company. If Santos Group had been involved in getting the permit, he said, that would have piqued residents' concern. Franzen's lawyer, Kevin Stroup, said Franzen did nothing wrong. He said Franzen made it clear to the MPCA, which issued the state permit, that he intended to build a sow facility. ''All the paper trail is all very clear that it's a sow facility,'' Stroup said. ''The only place anybody claims it wasn't just happens to be an informational meeting where there's no tape recorder on. And quite frankly I don't think the testimony of these people is very credible.'' MPR reported that it couldn't examine state documents because the file is currently closed while the MPCA investigates whether any statutes or rules were violated in the permitting process. If there were, that could shut down the feedlot. Franzen himself signed his own county feedlot permit, valued at $1,000. And the county issued a building permit six months before the state approved the project. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson wrote to the county saying those two actions violate state law. She also indicated that if these permits were the final county approvals of the feedlot, they had to be declared null and void. The attorney general's office would neither confirm nor deny an investigation into the matter. A group of citizens sued the county and Franzen asking for a temporary injunction based on the allegedly improper permitting. That request was denied. Paul Reevers, an attorney represending Mower County, said the county had started its own investigation in August. For now, Franzen is on paid administrative leave from his post as county feedlot officer.